Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: ‘You Kiss by the Book’

The EDSITEment-reviewed Teaching Shakespeare website, published by the Folger Shakespeare Library, offers the following textual history of Romeo and Juliet, situating its writing, performance, and publication in the last years of the 16th-century:

"Scholars generally date the writing of Romeo and Juliet to 1595-96, near in time to the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare based the plot on several sources, including Arthur Brooke's Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was published as a quarto in 1597. A fuller text of the play, which has served as the basis of all subsequent editions, appeared in quarto in 1599."

For information about the play, its history, its staging, Shakespeare, and more lesson plans, explore the Royal Shakespeare Company's educational website for a rich portal of resources on Romeo and Juliet.

The sonnet form, explored in the lesson activities below, was popularized by the 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch, who established the custom of presenting a problem, situation, or incident in the octave, followed by a resolution in the sestet. In Petrarch's work, these were usually problems, situations, and incidents arising from his love for the unattainable Laura. When English poets began imitating Petrarch's sonnets in the early 16th century, they continued this thematic focus on the pleasures and frustrations of love. But English poets eventually developed a more flexible sonnet form which could be divided into octave and sestet, in the manner of Petrarch, or into three quatrain-length variations on a theme followed by an epigrammatic couplet. More information about the Petrarchan and English sonnet forms is provided in "Poetic Form: Sonnet" via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

• Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• An online text of the entire play is available from MIT's Complete Works of William Shakespeare website. 
• Another  e-text of Romeo and Juliet can be found in Folger Digital Texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library.
• Review the first sonnet in Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence, "Delia," which was published in 1592. The poem is available in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles: Delia - Diana by Henry Constable and Samuel Daniel from Project Gutenberg by scrolling down to the poem, TO DELIA.

Activity 1. Analyzing the Text

Begin this lesson by having students turn to the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet at the Capulet ball, in Act I, Scene 5 (lines 95-112) in the Folger Shakespeare Library digital edition. 

Have students count the lines and examine the rhyme scheme; ask them if it looks familiar. Point out to students that these lines make up a sonnet, followed by a sonnet quatrain. Review briefly the distinction between a Shakespearean or English sonnet, which divides its 14 lines into three quatrains and a couplet, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg; and a Petrarchan sonnet, which divides its 14 lines into an eight line octave and a six line sestet, with the rhyme scheme abbaabba cdecde. Discuss briefly with students the history of the sonnet form (detailed in Background, above) or have them research the form at the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets.

For practice understanding the sonnet form, teachers can assign either (or both) of the following activities:

• Sonnet Unscrambler, which is available as an Online Interactive. In this activity, students attempt to put the sonnet back in its proper order (best assigned in class to prevent students from simply using a search engine to discover the answer).
• Parts of a Sonnet, which is available as a PDF worksheet. In this activity, students use the hints from the "Bank" to fill in the rhyme scheme, names, and other parts of both forms of the sonnet.

When students are finished with any of the above activities, ask them:

• Why is a sonnet an appropriate poetic form with which to bring the two lovers together in Shakespeare's play?
• What did poets typically use sonnets for at the time when Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet, in the early 1590s?

Provide students with a sample of Elizabethan sonnet writing to help them recognize the significance of Shakespeare's use of this poetic form—for example, "Sonnet I" in Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence, Delia, which was published in 1592. The worksheet Reading Delia—Sonnet 1 (PDF) contains questions to guide student reading. Have students examine "Sonnet 1" for conceits and other descriptive language. Remind students that a conceit is an extended metaphoric comparison that establishes parallels between two seemingly dissimilar things or situations. Petrarch established the practice of including conceits in sonnets by using elaborate comparisons to praise his lady's beauty and portray his own suffering. Students might note, for example, that Daniel continues this tradition by describing himself first as a river drawn to the ocean of his lady's beauty and later as a business ledger in which his lady may see how much emotion he has invested in her. Finally, ask students to consider the name Daniel has chosen for his lady. "Delia" is an anagram of "Ideal." Like most ladies in Elizabethan love sonnets, she is indeed a distant ideal, more inspirational than attainable, ennobling his verse with her virtue and beauty.

Now have students look at what Shakespeare has made of these conventions in his play. First ask students to explain Romeo's conceit of pilgrimage, and then to consider other aspects of the poem. Consider breaking students into groups to discuss the following questions:

• What is a pilgrimage?
• Who is the pilgrim here?
• Who is the holy saint?
• How does the conceit characterize the relationship between the two soon-to-be-lovers?
• How does the wittiness and word-play with which they develop the conceit play off against their metaphoric roles?
• To what extent is Romeo really the unworthy suitor of the sonnet tradition?
• To what extent is Juliet really the idealized paragon of virtue?
• How are the lines divided between the two speakers in the sonnet?
• How does this compare with the speaker addressing his unresponsive lady in "Delia"?
• Whose sonnet is this, in the end?

Finally, look at the "extra" quatrain that follows Romeo and Juliet's sonnet. Ask students the following questions:

• How does the playful exchange of "sins" here look forward to the tragic outcome of the play?
• How does Juliet's closing, "You kiss by the book," reflect on this little episode? What does she mean?

Students might suggest, for example, that Romeo is following the sonneteers' recipe for courtship too diligently, or that he is taking her words too literally. Perhaps she is suggesting that his kisses are somehow make-believe, like sonnet conceits. If so, ask students to consider how does Juliet stepping out of their conceit with this line characterize her role in their relationship? How does it look forward to her actions later in the play?

Activity 2. The Text Alive

As usual, Shakespeare's poetic artistry in this passage is only half the story. To explore the drama he has built into these lines, have two student volunteers act this episode, taking direction from members of the class.

Ask students what actions fit these words. For example, what is Romeo doing as he speaks his first four lines? Perhaps more importantly, what is Juliet doing? How does Romeo catch and hold her attention? How does she react? What is the exchange of gestures in this first moment of their relationship? Have students experiment to find a way of playing Romeo's first lines that sets the stage for Juliet to enter into the conceit and extend it with her answering quatrain.

Proceed in this detailed way through the remaining fourteen lines of the scene, encouraging students to experiment with various deliveries of the lines and to draw from Shakespeare's verse the implicit stage directions for this key moment of his drama. How does he bring the relationship of the imagery and word-play of his poetry to life on the stage? Are the lovers caught up in their conceit, or do they speak with a tone of self-awareness, using the conceit as a way of signaling their intentions to one another? Focus especially on the dynamics of the two kisses in the episode, the first marked by stillness ("Then move not"), the second by impulse ("Give me my sin again"). How far has the relationship moved between these two moments? How does this "extra" kiss reflect on the elaborate build-up to the first one? How does it look forward to the impulsiveness that will lead to tragedy later in the play?

Acting this episode brings out the importance of Juliet's closing line, "You kiss by the book." In the text, this can seem a throwaway; on stage, it is clearly the clincher. Have students experiment with a variety of ways Juliet might deliver the line, in order to notice how it characterizes her relationship with and her attitude toward Romeo. (Her tone and manner might be anything from a dreamy "You really know how to kiss!" to a sarcastic "You've got a lot to learn about kissing.") Help students notice, too, that by giving her this last line, Shakespeare has effectively given her control over the episode, made her step out of their charade and comment on it. What does this suggest about her character as compared to Romeo's? What does it suggest about the tone and manner in which she should

Activity 3. The Text in Context

To gauge the full dramatic effect of the sonnet Shakespeare created for the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet, it is necessary to see it in the context of the action surrounding it at the Capulet ball. Have student volunteers take the roles of Capulet, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, and the Nurse, and read the scene from Capulet's "Go to, go to!" through Romeo's couplet, "Is she a Capulet?/ O dear account! My life is my foe's debt" (Act I, Scene 5, lines 84-120 in the Signet edition).

Call attention to the fact that, while all these characters speak in verse, each speaks in a distinctive poetic style. Have students describe each style and explain how Shakespeare achieves it.

• What makes Capulet's speech seem naturalistic and near to prose?
• What makes Tybalt's pair of couplets seem exceptionally formal, almost posed, like a stage villain's aside?
• What gives the Nurse's short speech an informal, chatty, prose-like tone?

As your student volunteers read through the scene, ask the class to note the effect of the shifts in tone that Shakespeare has built into it.

• How do the formal verse forms of Tybalt and the lovers stand out against the more naturalistic verse of Capulet and the Nurse?
• How do the verse forms of these younger characters in the scene stand out against one another?
• In what sense do the characters who speak in formal poetry stand out because of their words?
• To what degree does the extended formality of Romeo and Juliet's meeting—and their action within that formality—deepen the poetic lighting of their moment together?

Divide the class into study groups and have each develop a stage interpretation of this short passage in Romeo and Juliet, based on the dramatic effects Shakespeare creates through poetic style and verse form. Encourage students to imagine in detail how this stretch of action might be performed, to play out various scenarios in their discussions. When they have finished, have each group share its staging, and then debate as a class which ideas seem to capture best that first meeting of the lovers on the Elizabethan stage.

Activity 4. The Text Extended

Conclude this lesson by having students work individually or in groups to find other moments in Romeo and Juliet where Shakespeare spotlights the action through poetic form and language. Students might look at the balcony scene (Act II, Scene 2), the bedroom scene (Act III, Scene 5, which is modeled on the aubade, a lyric of dawn-parting), the tomb scene (Act V, Scene 3), and so on. Have students prepare production notes for their chosen scene, explaining how they would direct the action, with special attention to how they would have their actors perform the richly poetic language Shakespeare gives them. Should the characters seem exalted by this language? Should they always seem not quite able to measure up to their high-flown words? Should they seem, like Juliet leaving Romeo at the ball, somehow independent of this poetic language, as if endowed with a life of their own?

To evaluate students' skills in sonnet analysis, give them (individually or in groups) a Shakespearean and/or a Petrarchan sonnet to analyze for its physical and meaning structures, identifying the rhyme scheme, discussing the prevailing conceit and imagery, and explaining the couplet's ending comment. For practice examining sonnet structures, ask students to play Sonnet Unscrambler.

To evaluate students' understanding of the text in context, assess the thoroughness of their production notes created in their groups as they analyzed the language of their selected scenes and explained their direction of the action.

To evaluate students' skills in applying their knowledge of the text in a new context, give them (individually or in groups) a cutting they have not analyzed earlier, such as a portion of the duel scene (Act III, Scene 1, lines 35-90), explaining to them the Elizabethan uses of "thee" and "thou." Have them examine the dialogue for that usage, explaining its impact on action and characterizations in the scene.

• Romeo and Juliet is an effective play with which to introduce students to Shakespeare's stage and stagecraft. For background, visit "Teaching Romeo and Juliet," available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Folger  Shakespeare Institute.

The following EDSITEment lesson plans, both of which take sonnets as their subject matter, have activities that would prove useful in the first activity of this lesson:

• Listening to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet
• Preparing for Poetry: A Reader's First Steps
• EDSITEment's "A Teacher's Guide for Shakespeare"

EDSITEment's "A Teacher's Guide for Shakespeare"